The entire FIFA Soccer Blog team came together to produce this epic review, with specific sections being handed to certain guys to cover. You know, the experts. Anyway, enough rambling, we hope you enjoy reading it. We know not everyone will agree, but that’s cool. Feel free to comment and let us know what you think.
This is perhaps where EA have put most of their effort into with
FIFA 15, bringing out the most authentic and realistic looking FIFA title yet, and considering how good the game looks year after year, it is great to see EA still making big strides in the Visual and Presentation department. The stadiums are much livelier with fans, singing and cheering their team with a whole host of chants and songs, groaning at missed shots and screaming at goals. Another really enjoyable bit is the emotions expressed by the players themselves. Tackle a player too often, and you may end up in a fight with him. Miss open chances and risk disgruntling your team-mates. This and much more awaits you in FIFA 15.
For those who still don’t know, Ultimate Team is EA’s marquee micro-transaction mode, in which gamers buy packs of cards that have various players to improve their team, either with real cash or in-game currency. FIFA 15 does a stellar job of laying out the intricate details of this mode and explaining them. They teach players how to maximize chemistry and even shows you the benefits with a stacked team having 100% chemistry, before you build your own ultimate team. This works as a strong motivator and shows how good a team can be given enough effort.
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When you go through all the skill games and tutorials, you do eventually realize that there are a bunch of new skill moves in FIFA 15. However, my opinion on these moves is the same as my opinion was last year. There are too many to really be used effectively. The button combinations are hard to remember and feel kind of arbitrary and I play fighting games on a professional level so I don’t say this lightly! Not to mention each skill is ranked 1-5 and certain players can only do moves of certain rank and it’s kind of hard to tell which player you are currently controlling. Overall, I just gave up on using these moves most of the time. In fact, the one thing that I wanted to remain constant from FIFA 14, the skill move command list, changed up in FIFA 15, meaning you’ll have to learn them again if you were already playing at a pro level.
This is also a game that will challenge you, even as a seasoned player. The AI in FIFA 15 is brutal, to say the least, with most breakaways ending in a goal, and this time around rather than being frustrated at conceding a goal that you felt was unfair, you will clearly be able to see why the goal was conceded. It might have been a defensive line caught out by a perfect pass, a defensive line creeping up too far or a man being left unmarked. This is a marked improvement to FIFA 14 where I often conceded goals that I felt were not necessarily realistic, especially when defenders were unable to obtain the ball with quality tackling.
Which brings me to some sort of conclusion. FIFA 15 is still great. I still love playing it. It’s exciting and tense and skillful and rewarding. There’s no better local multiplayer game, when all the above mentioned frustrations in FIFA 15 can be turned against and inflicted upon a friend, making them upset and angry for unfair reasons. FIFA 15 Ultimate Team’s RPG systems and collectible card systems are still absurdly moreish. This year’s tweaks to pace and goalkeepers and so on do marginally improve certain things, though I miss some of FIFA 13’s defensive nous.
